How many come back posts am I going to post on this blog?! I'm hoping that this will be the last!

My last post was in October 2014, and in a lot of ways it feels like a lifetime ago. As you will have guessed from the picture, and if you follow me on instagram, you will know that everything has changed for me in the last 18 months... I'm now a mummy! This picture was taken in May 2015, when I was around 5 months pregnant with my wonderful little boy Lucas. (Seeing this pregnant picture of me up on my blog makes me a little sad that I didn't blog throughout my pregnancy, those posts would have been amazing for me to look back on. At least I can be thankful for instagram!)

Lucas is now a happy, lively 7 month old and an absolute joy to be around. I plan to post a lot more on a Charlotte's Collection so I'm sure you'll see a lot of him on here, but for now I wanted to say 'hey' and give a little run down of what I've been up to in the last 18 months... wow, now for me to think back, which can be difficult with constant baby brain!

January 2015

I visited my new born nephew in Malta, though I didn't know I had a teeny tiny little Lucas in my tummy - it was a good job that I had given up alcohol!

March 2015

Our first scan, Lucas even looked cute as a 12 week old fetus!

May 2015

My grandad passed away. This was a really sad time for me for obvious reasons, we had a lot of bereavement in the family in the weeks up until my grandad's passing and this came as a complete shock. It makes me sad every time I think that they won't ever meet, they're both such characters and I see so many of my grandad's expressions in Lucas that it would have been great to see them together!

In may we also went on a much need 'baby moon' to Dubrovnik, Croatia. The weather was amazing and Chris and I were so busy at work and had been through so much that it was just what we needed to relax before the crazy busy coming months!

June 2015

A 29 week pregnant me attended Glastonbury Festival! It was an experience... I've been to the festival before so I didn't think anything to going whilst pregnant, we had a great time but it was way more tiring than I expected. For those that have never been before, Glastonbury is massive! You do smooch walking just to get from one stage to another that I was ready for bed by 10pm each night!... especially since I wasn't able to drink any alcohol to keep me going!! Luckily blow up mattresses are pretty comfy when you're pregnant so sleeping in a tent wasn't a big deal!

As we set off to Glastonbury for the weekend builders moved into our house to start our kitchen rennovations! We knocked through our kitchen and dining room while opening up existing extension ceiling at the same time for extra height and added velux windows. It was more than work than you'd expect due to supporting walls and the existing extension so I was pleased to be enjoying a festival while all the really messy work was underway!

July 2015

This month was a blur of builders dust, living without a kitchen and DIY! We had a lot of help from family but Chris did a lot of the work himself including laying a solid wood floor and fitting the quite bespoke kitchen that we designed!

August 2015

Hello maternity leave. I was getting pretty big by the end of August when I was due to finish work, it was summer, work was hectic (2015 was one of the most stressful years I'd experienced at my company, not exactly what I needed given that I was pregnant!) so I was very much ready to start my maternity leave and finally start preparing for the baby!

September 2015

Lucas arrived on September 2015 by emergency c-section, 11 days late! I went into labour naturally but he was back to back which meant he wasn't in the right position to come out unassisted... if I can muster up the courage I think I'll write about my labour and delivery story on here!

I'd been exclusively breastfeeding Lucas but towards the end of December this became a real struggle. January was a really pivotal month on our breastfeeding journey, Lucas had a posterior tongue tie divided, he was nearly 4 months old so it had gone undiagnosed for a long time, and by February I'd started feeding him with a combination of breastfeeding and formula. Feeding your baby is such an important topic and I feel like we went through nearly everything imaginable on our journey where I'd hoped, but been unable to, breastfeed exclusively. However I'm still breastfeeding Lucas today, something that I'm really proud of and didn't expect to be doing back in January. I learnt so much that I think it deserves a blog post all of it's own. Watch this space!

February 2016

I turned 30! I still can't believe that my twenties are over, but I was lucky to have welcomed in my thirties with plenty of celebrations. I was treated to plenty of lunches and afternoon tea with the ladies of my family. We had a night without the baby as we hosted a party that went on about 5 hours past my new bedtime (of 9pm!) and I visited Edinburgh with my boys - our first time travelling with Lucas.

March 2016

My first Mother's Day, we enjoyed snow topped hills on a lovely walk in the Yorkshire Dales. Bliss.

April 2016

Lucas' first trip abroad. We've just got back from visiting Chris' parents in Normandy. Lucas loved spending time with his grandparents and we had a wonderful break in a part of France that we're lucky enough to now know really well. Lucas did so well on the long car and ferry journeys that it's made me a lot more relaxed about our up coming trip to Malta to visit my family!

Well that was an update an a half! Thanks for sticking with me if you read this post to the end... and for just reading it at all after the long break I took from blogging!

I'm a bit late to the party when it comes to Bioderma Créaline H2O dupes, nearly all beauty brands have one now, but I've always stuck to the original - I visit France regularly so have never really struggled to get my hands on it. Bioderma Créaline H2O is pretty easy to get hold of now in the UK (you can find it in some pharmacies, on beauty websites, Amazon and eBay), but being able to pick up something very similar in a high street drugstore is always a bonus.

I mentioned when reviewing Bioderma that the product was basically glorified water, but really it's more than that! It really does cut through make-up that much more effectively than water ever could. I use it as a pre or post cleanser, sometimes both if I happen to be wearing a lot of make-up, and I've been using the L'Oréal Paris Skin Perfection Micellar Water in exactly the same way. Both are also perfect if you're feeling particularly lazy before bed!

The L'Oréal Paris Skin Perfection Micellar Water is incredibly gentle, it causes no irritation to my sensitive eyes. There are definitely more effective ways of removing heavy eye make-up, but this Micellar Water is great at getting rid of a light applications of mascara, or those pesky last traces.

The obvious positive to the L'Oréal Micellar Water is the price, at £4.99 in Boots it's a good few pounds cheaper than Bioderma. The bottle however isn't as effective at dispensing the product, the large, wide flat lid makes it hard to control the amount you end up using.

If I could only buy one product for the rest of my days, it would have to be Bioderma over the L'Oréal Paris Skin Perfection Micellar Water, but in my opinion the differences are so subtle I would happily repurchase the L'Oréal in between my trips to France.

Have you tried both or either of these cleansing waters? Let me know what you think. If you blogged about them, link to your post in the comments below!

The box room at my house is around half way towards becoming the home office of my Pinterest inspired dreams! Approximately 746 layers of wallpaper were painstakingly removed, the walls re-plastered and everything painted a bright white... and I mean everything! The walls, ceiling, skirting board, window frame and even the door are now white!I've always had the image of a stark white room with statement black furniture in mind, and if you checked out my pinterest boards you'd see around 50 images similar to those above. Chic, simple, stylish and semi-Scandinavian is the look I'm going for.So far this little room contains a simple IKEA desk (like in the bottom right picture) made up of the white Linnmon table top and dark grey Lerberg trestle legs, and also my beloved black ladder shelves from Amazon (like in the bottom left picture). And that's about it! I do want to keep the home office minimal (though also with the odd picture collage), but not as minimal as it currently is! I've decided that the next purchase for the room is going to an Ray and Charles Eames style chair, but I really can't decided whether to go for black, grey or white... Or even if I should get the eames DAW armchair version or the standard DSW dining chair!!I need help, so let me know your thoughts in the comment section below! Also, keep dropping by the blog to see the finished Home Office!

I love a relaxed walk through the woods in Autumn, the colours are just amazing and the changing of the season is always a little special. Today was unusually warm for an Autumn's day up north, but it's still Autumn nevertheless so that means jumper and jeans time! I recently picked up the Topshop Leigh Jeans with the oh so popular ripped knees. I was in need of a nicely fitted pair of light blue jeans, and I'd been having some serious fashion envy of anyone I saw wearing them I just had to get them!

It seems that the turning of the seasons has brought khaki back into stores. Luckily I've got plenty of khaki pieces from around two years ago, so I dug out this old studded jumper from Warehouse to pair with my new purchase - the whole outfit was perfect for a casual Sunday walk.